I have been organizing my studio (and well, my daughter’s closet, and the top shelf in my closet, and all the other places I have paintings stashed) and came across these two paintings. It took me a while to realize that they are both of the same exact scene. The one on the bottom was done first. It’s 8″x10″ oil on canvas, it was painted plein air late in the afternoon as a storm was coming in. I remember feeling a few raindrops and hearing thunder while painting. The painting on top was done a year later. It’s a larger painting, 12″x16″ oil on canvas. It was obviously a different kind of day. I painted it on the way back from spending time with my daughter and son-in-law in Austin. I met my friend Myrrh on the side of the road halfway between Houston and Austin that day, she’s a really good sport!

Below is a photo of me painting the lower painting so you can see what the scene actually looks like. I like to think that a year later I had gained some confidence in my plein air painting and was using bigger brush strokes, more paint and even painting on larger canvases. A 12″x16″ canvas is a lot more to cover than an 8″x10″!

I am really beginning to understand “For purple mountain majesties” as I study the Teton range here in Jackson, Wyoming. In the afternoon the angle of the sun starts to make the mountains more and more purple. Sometimes they even look almost black below the tree line. Though because of the distance between here and the mountains of course they are never black but deep greenish purple. (Try painting that color!) I wish I understood the science of this but I don’t. I’ll have to have my son explain it to me next time I talk to him.

It’s mid July and there isn’t much snow left on the mountain tops. I went hiking with a friend last week and we were high enough that the trail was impassable because of snow! Well, impossible for us, people that were more determined were hiking on up with their tents and ropes. A day hike is more my speed.

Below is a photo I took just as I was finishing this study. If you look at the color between the trees just above that little horse barn (which I left out of my painting) you can see that gorgeous purple color! And then if you follow the mountain range far over to the right, you can see that purple color has turned a very light violet. More alizarin and less blue. Beautiful!

I am here in Jackson Hole, WY for a good part of the summer. Because I’m surrounded by mountains that’s the obvious subject to paint, so I’ve grabbed a few small canvases and set out to see what I can do.

The Teton’s (we are at the edge of Grand Teton National Park) are so beautiful, the highest peak reaching close to 14,000 feet. It’s easy to see why my husband and I fell in love with the area. The thing about the mountains though is that they change SO quickly. All the more challenging when I’m out there painting. Some would say fun but I like “challenging” better. This little study was done in late June with summer showers all around. The overcast sky brought out the true colors in the mountains. You’ll see in another painting I’ll post soon how purple the mountains can look in the sunlight.

I’ve been thinking about packing my small pochade box and paints in a backpack and bringing them on a hike into the mountains. I haven’t convinced myself yet though, mainly because the view from “down here” in the valley is amazing.

Next week I have a night at the Jackson Rodeo with a friend planned. I’m hoping to get some reference photos at the rodeo. Then the following weekend I’ll drive 3 hours to Riverton to a big Native American Powwow here in WY. I’m hoping to get some good reference photos at the 2 day celebration. I’ve never been to a powwow before and it should be interesting and I’m really looking forward to it.

Last weekend I was privledged to judge the Lone Star Art Guild show at their Annual Convention and Art Show. The Convention and Art Show was held at the Flour Corporation in Sugarland, Texas. It was a fun and educational experience to judge this show.

I was one of three judges. The three of us chose the Best of Show in 5 categories together. Then the 500+ paintings and sculptures were divided among the three judges to award 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and honorable mention in each category. And there were a lot of categories: Professional, semi-professional, non-professional, adult student and school student.

So there I am with my clipboard, looking official! The Art Guild even provided two volunteers to walk with me and take notes on which paintings I awarded ribbons. I am friends with one of the other judges and the third judge was great to get to know. Overall, it was a very well run show and the three of us judges were treated a bit like celebrities with our volunteers trailing after us and a lunch of our choice brought in at lunchtime!

I arrived about 10:15 a.m. along with the other two judges (I carpooled with one from Houston) and we began judging at 11:00 a.m. By 12:30 p.m. We had walked through the entire exhibit …. very slowly …. and picked Best of Show for 5 categories. (Don’t ask, there were a separate group of categories just for Best of Show.) Then it was lunch time. I know the show organizers were getting a bit nervous because it was 12:30 p.m. And all we had done was pick Best of Shows and the judging was to be completed by 3:00 p.m. We had a nice lunch. Now it’s 1:00 p.m.!

Not to worry, it was very helpful to walk through the show with the other two judges and discuss the entries. After lunch when we split up to each judge our own section – I had Mixed Media, Abstract/Non-Representatinal (harder than I thought it would be!), and Photography – it went fairly quickly because I had discussed each if those sections with the other two judges. As a side note, most large competitions are judged by multiple judges together as a consensus.

So the judging was done and the three of us judges got 30 min to relax while the show volunteers pinned ribbons on the winning paintings. At this point throngs of people were waiting behind ropes to get into the exhibition.

The Art Guild had asked the three judges to stick around and offer critiques after the judging. And sure enough, each judge had a line of artists waiting to have their work critiqued. I was a bit nervous about this part but it was actually pretty fun. Most of the people that asked me had been awarded ribbons. and just wanted to know how to improve their paintings, or what made me award their work a ribbon.

Except for one man. He did not get a ribbon and his question was “Why didn’t I get a ribbon?”. This is where I as a judge had to stand behind my decision to award other works ribbons. At this point it’s important to be sensitive and encouraging. All the work in this show was there because it had already placed in a regional show during the last year, so I was only judging fine work.

It was a fun day and I was happy to be a part of ultimately encouraging artists along their path to creating their best work!

Two Paints on canvas. Well now that’s confusing, but that’s what the pattern on these horses are called. I took photos of horses when I was out plein air painting at a horse farm a year ago and came across a great photo of these two recently. They weren’t Paints in the photo but I was in love with the idea of making abstract patterns so they became Paints. It was a lot of fun to invent the dark and light areas so you could still see it’s two horses but it’s not immediately obvious. This is framed in a dark walnut frame to contain all that white background. I used a lot of gesso on the canvas to give it some texture before I started painting, you can’t see this on the screen though.

Below is a photo of the work in progress. I’m just starting a painting session because you can see I don’t even have my paint squeezed out yet on the glass palette. No mess yet. 🙂

“Paints” in progress.

Below is a close up of the head. Little bit of violet in the shadows, some orange to give it life. I think it’s always good to throw in some color to give a painting more life. Not enough to make it look like a colorist painting or a German Expressionist, but just enough to make the painting come alive. That’s the goal anyway. Thank you for visiting my blog.

The day after I painted with the Teton Plein Air Painters my husband and I went to the Art Fair in the Town Square. This is a busy two weeks and there are lots of events as part of the annual Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festval.

What a great turn out to see the many local artists! Tents were full of pottery, jewelry, paintings, painted tiles, pillows, leather crafts, and much more that I’ve already forgotten. A number of local restaurants also had stations set up on the grass in the park area with tiny samplings of their fare. For $3 or $4 you could get a delicious slider or shrimp skewer. We managed to spend our $20 worth of tickets quickly and everything was delicious.

“Takin’ it to the Streets” wine tasting and auction. Jackson, WY

A large white tent housed a wine tasting and auction sponsored by the Rotary Club. This is a photo of wine you can “win” in a raffle. I love the idea of wrapping each bottle so what you get is a surprise!

My husband and I went to church before this event and the service was great, then on to the Art Fair which was so much fun. And the day got even better when I ran into a couple that I had met the day before when I was out painting with the Teton Plein Air Painters. They asked me about the painting they saw me creating in the park and inquired about purchasing it! We made a plan for them to come by our house the next day . . . .

A beautiful Saturday morning of painting with the Teton Plein Air Painters in Grand Teton National Park. Twenty two of us showed up to paint in conjunction with the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival.

It it was a glorious day, look at that blue sky! The plein air group is a fun and talented group of artists. I especially loved that many tourists stopped by my easel to see what I was doing. It was fun to talk to people who were visiting from all over: a charming man from Vermont we is a wood carver, a fun couple from Nevada camping across the country for the first time in 30 years, a couple from New Jersey who was on day 20 of a driving vacation, and tour buses with people from all over the US. I really cherish each one of the conversations and it’s fun to be a tiny part of their vacation as in “remember those artists we saw in the park?” Or maybe that never comes up in conversation.

It was fun to get out and paint with the group. I brought along a photo of an elk just in case I wanted to add something to a landscape. I ended up painting the elk and enjoying painting the elk so much that I didn’t add much else into the painting. I didn’t want to distract from the elk and I liked the raw quality of leaving some of the toned canvas showing.

A couple of people even inquired about purchasing the painting right there on the spot, but I really wasn’t far enough along to sell it.

Time to print new business cards. And every time I run out I always come up with a new business card, definitely not what’s recommended for “brand recognition” in Marketing 101 but I’m a work in progress and my business cards reflect that. My son was actually the one who suggested I put an image on the card. And then since nothing I do is ever simple, I ended up with four different images. I know enough about printing to know that business cards aren’t printed one at a time. If you print four different business cards at a time we used to call this “4 up”. Some of the places where you might order a business card online print tens at a time. Your business card is being printed along with 50 others (maybe more?) and then they are all cut down afterwards.

I decided to use my signature as my “logo” to reflect the way I sign my paintings. Maybe now I can stick with that, it at least has a connection to my paintings. Then came the fun part, picking images to put on the cards.

The cows and horses are taken from recent paintings. The little boy is a recent portrait and I figured it would be good to have a business card with a portrait for portrait clients. doh. The last one is a painting I did in a model lab years ago. I had painted that model in that pose for three weeks straight and on the fourth week I decided to paint the model and two other artists working away. I’m glad I did, seeing that little image of the classroom makes me miss going to model labs, I haven’t been to one in over a year.

So, what kind of business card is this with no information on it, you ask? My full name, website address and e-mail address is on the back. We’ll see how this works out. Like I said, every time I print business cards I try something new.

New business card proofs.

Above are the proofs of the card that I approved at the printer. The advantage of having business cards printed locally is that I can drive over to my printer and look at the color on the proofs. For the big online companies all you get is an image to approve online. I had postcards printed online once by Vistaprint. A man in Jamaica took my order, the postcards were printed in Canada, and shipped to me here in Houston. They actually did a pretty good job and even with the shipping it was an inexpensive way to go. If you’re not very picky about the color you’re getting that could be a good way to go. I’m picky about color, especially when it comes to an image of a portrait.

I love anything printed so maybe that’s why I love this process so much and why this post about my new business cards is longer than most of my other posts! Thank you for reading my blog, if you would like to SUBSCRIBE to my blog just type in your e-mail in the box over there to the right. I will not share your address with anyone and you can cancel anytime.

It was finally time to paint cows! I’ve been taking pictures of cows for years. Cows as my family drives along Texas highways to visit grandma, cows as we’re driving along the backroads and ranches of Wyoming, cows in France, cows in the Netherlands. When my kids were smaller they even knew which cows I would refer to as “good cows” and which were the “bad cows”.

There is a list of what makes a cow a “good cow”.

“Good cows” were good, and therefore paintable, if their heads were facing the sun or at least in partial sunlight. Nobody wants to look at a painting of a cow from behind. They needed to be light enough in color that I could see (and paint) the sunlight and shadows on their hides. Light brown, medium brown, or black and white cows were all cause for a photo.

“Bad cows” were the cows that were facing the wrong way. Seems cows like to face towards the sun and away from the wind. So those factors, and where the highway we were on was, all had to be working together to get good photos. It’s like waiting for the planets to align. And this hardly ever happened. (Cows aligning, I’m not sure about planets.) And black cows are difficult to paint because there isn’t that much variation in value between where the sun hits them and where they are in shadow. Of course it can be done, and done beautifully, but in my early days of taking photos of cows, I avoided black cows for this reason.

All that being said, these cows were painted from a photo of cows that were actually brown and white. I was painting in Holland and was able to get pretty close to a big herd of big dairy cows. I changed them to black and white and I rearranged the patterns on their hides. I needed the black and white pattern to make a strong abstract pattern. Below is a photo of some of my “reference” cows that I came across in Holland next to a canal a couple of years ago.

Cows along a canal in Holland.

This painting was so much fun. I loved using all the different colors in the white part of the hide. I had the idea to make a black and white painting without actually having anything being black or white. So I used lots of ultramarine blues, alizarin crimson, violets, all kinds of colors to get the black and then yellow ochres, greens, and violets (and of course white mixed in with those colors to get the value correct) for the “white” part. Lots of fun, I could paint many more of these and be happy. Below is a close up. Oh, and the pink noses were great to paint to. I enjoyed seeing the noses come to life as I added the pinks and fleshy tones. I know . . . weird! But it’s fun for me.

I haven’t posted in so long I’ve almost forgotten how to do it! But I figured it out. Time to catch up on some of the paintings I’ve done recently. This was so much fun, a darling little boy who held on to the cute toy airplane. (The toy airplane even has a name, Dusty Crophopper, from a movie . . . I think by the same name. Anyway, my kids are too big for me to know this stuff.) Back to what I do know . . . I loved painting his blonde hair, lots of chunky paint that I just left alone. And see all that green in his hair? Lots of reflected light from the green background. Blonde hair is mostly green anyway, sounds crazy but it’s true.

This portrait was commissioned by this cuties grandmother who always gives me lots of artistic freedom. Pretty much a dream client. We let her grandchildren have fun and do what they want and it always works, I always get a photo that captures their personality. My client, and now friend, let’s me make paintings full of energy and color. This child is happy so I used a bright happy background to go with his smile.

Below is a close up, you can see the thick paint I used for the hair. And one of my favorite things about this portrait is how the light shines through the upper part of his ear on our right. That somehow gives the shadow side of his face a touch of life. The shirt was a lot of fun to paint too. It was fun using thick paint and not just plain old “brown” but greens and oranges in that shirt. And last but not least that airplane was a blast to paint. Painting the little details of an airplane is when I can really get into the zone. It’s meditative. It’s the bigger picture, basically ALL the other stuff, that takes work! I have to balance not getting too detailed with showing enough information, especially in a portrait.